"Poison."
"Poison?" she repeated, shrinking in a natural repulsion. "Poison on a mask you gave the Dauphin? Stephen, how could that be? But you must answer, you must tell us," she insisted as he shook his head for the second time, "you must, you must!"
"I cannot." He spoke curtly, harshly, but the determination was unmistakable. Twice he repeated it. "I cannot, I cannot."
"But, Stephen——"
"Ursula, you don't doubt me? You don't think—you can't think I knew? You can't think I planned this—this——" He faltered as his eyes turned upon the limp body he still carried in his hands. He had passed his word to the King to be silent, and even if he spoke, the truth would only add horror to horrors. "Ursula—beloved!" Laying Charlot on the table he held out his hands in appeal, to have them caught in both hers, and he himself drawn into her arms.
"Doubt you? No, Stephen, no, no; I trust you utterly—utterly. And cannot you trust me? We have the boy to think of—the Dauphin—he must be protected. But for Charlot he—he—oh! I cannot say it. Stephen, don't you see? don't you understand? How can we guard him in the dark? The mask, Stephen: whose was it? where did it come from? Tell me for the boy's sake."
"I cannot, Ursula. Dearest heart, I cannot."
Lifting from the table the napkin in which the mask had been wrapped, Villon shook it out, holding it up much as La Mothe had held the coat-of-mail. Then he threw it on the table, spreading it flat.
"Fleur-de-lys," he said, his finger on the woven pattern.
"Fleur-de-lys and—Stephen, you came from Valmy? Oh! My God! My God!
I understand it all. So that is why you are in Amboise?"